'The Bill' struggling in new timeslot

ITV1's The Bill is struggling in its new timeslot, overnight viewing figures suggest.

Last month, the Sun Hill drama moved to a Thursday slot, airing weekly during the 9pm hour.

Last night's instalment of ITV's flagship drama averaged 3.42m (14.9%), a drop of over a million from its first revamped episode, which took 4.5m (19.2%) on Thursday, July 23. Last week, 3.64m (16%) tuned in.

The most-watched programme during the 9pm hour was BBC One's New Tricks, which pulled in an impressive 6.92m (30.2%).

Channel 4's How The Other Half Live took 2.27m (9.9%), while Five's The Mentalist managed 1.56m (6.8%).

Over on BBC Two, a half-hour edition of Mock The Week had 2.31m (10.1%) at 9pm. The Funny Side Of... Politics followed at 9.30pm, bringing in 1.53m (7.2%).

BBC One's 8pm hour was made up of As Seen On TV and The Rat Pack, which logged 2.53m (13.1%) and 2.61m (12.6%) respectively.

How Clean Is Your House? - starring Kim Woodburn and Aggie Mackenzie - returned to Channel 4 with 1.71m (8.9%) at 8pm, then Dolce Vito - Dream Restaurant had 990k (4.8%) at 8.30pm.

The penultimate episode of Rick Stein's Far Eastern Odyssey pulled in 2.56m (12.7%) for BBC Two during the 8pm hour, while 466k (2.3%) tuned in for Extreme Fishing With Robson Green on Five.

Channel 4's Big Brother highlights show was seen by 2.32m (13.8%) at 10pm, with a further 124k (1.5%) tuning in on timeshift.

Overall, BBC One came top during primetime with an average share of 23.4% to ITV1's 22.1%. Channel 4 was third with 8.5% (+1: 0.8%), followed by BBC Two with 8.3% and Five's 4.6%.